News: Archbishop of Washington: Nearly One Christian Killed Every Hour for Practicing Faith

WASHINGTON,
D.C. — Nearly one Christian is killed every hour around the world for
practicing their faith, said the Archbishop of the U.S. capital.

Cardinal
Donald Wuerl made those comments on Thursday while delivering the keynote
address during the one-day symposium at
the National Press Club focused on Christian prosecution.

The
event featured the release of a report
by the University of Notre Dame’s Under
Caesar’s Sword project titled, “In Response to Persecution.”

Christian
persecution is a worldwide phenomenon, noted the Washington archbishop.

“Reports
suggest that about 200 million Christians around the world are at risk of
physical violence, arrest, torture, even death simply because they live and
practice a faith that is not acceptable to the rulers in that part of the
world,” he pointed out.

“The
journalist John Allen recently estimated that, this is a quote, the
number of Christians killed for religious reasons is ‘roughly one every hour,
365 days a year,’” added the cardinal.

That
amounts to about 9,000 Christians killed per year, which is consistent with a study
by the Turin-based Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR).

According
to the study, about 9,000 Christians were killed worldwide for practicing their
faith last year.

The
estimate marks a nearly 20-percent increase from the 7,100 Christians whom Open Doors USA said
lost their lives for religious reasons in 2015.

Analysts,
including Open Doors, have deemed Christians the most
persecuted group in the world.

Nevertheless,
the persecution report says, “Christian responses to persecution are almost
always nonviolent and, with very few exceptions, do not involve acts of
terrorism.”

Wuerl
noted that persecuted adherents of Christianity in the birthplace of the faith,
the Middle East, are suffering the most.

“The
place where persecution of Christians is being most severely experienced is the
very place where Christianity all began,” he said. “In that region of the world
is the birthplace of the Christian faith.”

Last
year, the American government acknowledged that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)
had been committing genocide against Christians and other ethnoreligious
minorities in the Middle East.

Echoing
members
of the ethnoreligious minority groups victimized by ISIS, Cardinal Wuerl said
nothing changed for the persecuted Christians following the genocide
declaration.

Specifically,
Wuerl said, “Life has not gotten any better” for Christians in the Middle East
since the former U.S. administration conceded that ISIS had been carrying out
genocide.

“The
civil war in Syria, which has included war crimes such as the use of chemical
weapons, among other horrors, has added to suffering imposed on these innocent
people [including Christians], which did not bring this conflict into being,”
said the archbishop.

Wuerl’s
comments come after some Catholic
leaders criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for launching
airstrikes against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in response to the leader’s
most recent use of chemical weapons.

Syrian
Christians are “vulnerable” as a result of the civil war in the country, which
has been raging since 2011, notes the persecution report featured during
Thursday’s event

In
the war-ravaged country, many Christians have ‘“reluctantly” directed their
loyalty to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, it adds.

Although
many Christians support Assad, Christian militia
based in Syria’s northeastern al-Hasakah province has expressed disdain for the
dictator.

The
Syriac Military Council (MFS) militia is part of the U.S.-backed Syrian
Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and other groups
preparing to fight ISIS to retake their de-facto capital in Syria Raqqa.